Lady Gaga is approaching a major milestone of the new music industry: one billion all-time YouTube views.
Lady Gaga should pass one billion views around October 20 if she continues on her current pace, according to David Birch, communications director at TubeMogul. During September, she averaged almost 1.8 million views per day.
Even though Lady Gaga will be the first to the one billion mark, TubeMogul data shows that lately Justin Bieber has been the hotter of the two and has been YouTube's most-viewed music artist. From July 1 to September 28, according to TubeMogul data supplied to Billboard, Bieber averaged 3.98 million daily views to Lady Gaga's 2.04 million views per day.
Bieber has been hot since winter. Since February 28, Bieber has averaged 3.83 million daily views while Lady Gaga has averaged 2.53 million. To put their numbers in perspective, Kanye West has averaged 271,000 daily views in that time period.
But what really stands out is the consistent performance of Bieber's videos. In April, TubeMogul began "Most Viral Videos of the Month" to highlight the most-viewed videos -- including unofficial versions -- in a given month. Nearly 9 in 10 of all videos to make the list have been music videos, and Justin Bieber has been the one constant month after month. He had four of the top 10 videos of the month from April through August.
Both artists have many of YouTube's all-time most-viewed videos. Bieber's "Baby" is YouTube's most-watched video of all time with 345 million views. His "Never Let You Go" is No. 22 with 92 million views while "Never Say Never" is No. 28 with 86 million views.
Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" is No. 2 all-time at YouTube with 288 million views. "Just Dance" is at 11 with 123 million views, "Alejandro" is 26 with 87 million views and "Telephone" is 31 with 85 million views.
